It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when Pres­i­dent Bush in Wash­ing­ton began read­ing his State of the Union address that included the now famous — later retracted — 16 words: “The British Gov­ern­ment has learned that Sad­dam Hus­sein recently sought sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of ura­nium from Africa.”